Foot & Soccer Soccer Match Reports, Football News
June 18 – According to current estimates there are three million people of Turkish origin living in Germany.
At what is perhaps the best football ground in the world, the Westfalen Stadion, it sounded like every single one of them had made the trip to Dortmund to watch their country beat neighbours, Georgia 3-1, in a proper Ottoman derby.
One of the reasons that the Westfalen is so magnificent (the Signal Iduna Park name just doesn’t stick) is because of the acoustics and the noise generated from both sets of supporters which was truly on a different level to anything experienced in this tournament so far, and that included a little skirmish in the a corner that required the presence of some riot police.
As players you couldn’t helped but be inspired by the febrile atmosphere and the game began at a cracking pace, helped by a slick pitch after a torrential downpour 20 minutes before kick-off.
According to FIFA rankings, which should be taken with a pinch of salt, Turkey are 41st in the world while Georgia are 34 places behind in 75th spot, making this match on paper one of the weakest games in the tournament.
Muhammed Kerem Akturkoglu scored Turkey’s third As expected, Turkish coach, Vincenzo Montella sent out his team to dominate possession while his opposite number, Willy Sagnol had his team sit back and wait for the counter-attacking opportunities. It made for an intriguing opening stanza.
On 10 minutes, Turkey’s left winger Kenan Yildiz thought he’d opened the scoring, fizzing a twenty-yarder off the inside of the right-hand post only to see the ball skid agonizingly across the face of the goal.
A minute later Georgia were straight back and created their own opportunity as Anzor Mekvabishvili’s deflected effort seemingly wrong footed Merk Gunok in the Turkish goal, however Gunok managed to sort his feet out and shovel the ball out for a corner for a quite excellent save.
As the clock struck 25 minutes Mert Mulder, the right-back lit…
Source link : https://www.insideworldfootball.com/2024/06/18/turkish-delight-westfalen-cranks-euro24-volume/
Author : Paul Nicholson
Publish date : 2024-06-18 20:33:00
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